Jack Beckman raced to the provisional No. 1 qualifying position in Funny Car at the 52nd-annual O'Reilly Auto Parts NHRA Winternationals presented by Super Start Batteries at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona, Calif., on Thursday.

Morgan Lucas (Top Fuel) and Mike Edwards (Pro Stock) were qualifying leaders in the other top classes at the 2012 Full Throttle Drag Racing Series season opener.

Beckman drove his Valvoline NextGen Dodge Charger to the provisional No. 1 spot with a 4.139-second pass at 308.14 mph to best the competitive Funny Car class. If Beckman holds on to the top spot, it will be the fifth of his career and second at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona.

“The most important thing is if we can go down the track and get good computer data, we can pick away at it from there,” Beckman said. “If you go out there and smoke the tires, you don't know how much you missed it by. We all know that 4.13 is not going to hold, but we feel we have as good a shot of stepping up as any other car out there.”

Courtney Force made her first run in Funny Car competition in her Traxxas Ford Mustang with a 4.210-second pass at 303.16 mph, which was good enough for the provisional sixth spot. Force will line up next to her father and Funny Car legend, 15-time world champ John Force, for the second round of qualifying of the season opener.

Defending Top Fuel event winner Morgan Lucas drove his Geico/Lucas Oil dragster to the top of the pack with his pass of 3.832 seconds at 320.28 mph.

“The weather conditions today were pretty similar to what we had in testing, so our team has a lot of confidence in this range,” Lucas said. “Hopefully Sunday is the same, but I know we're expecting cooler conditions Saturday, so you never know what's going to happen. But hopefully we can keep running along with the big guys.”

In Pro Stock, Edwards looks to secure the 41st No. 1 of his career and his fifth at Auto Club Raceway with his 6.545-second pass at 211.86 mph.

“It feels really, really good,” Edwards said. “When you start off a new season, you never know what to expect, and we got off to a great start. It was a great run. My guys did a phenomenal job. We just made one of the nicest runs we've made in Pomona in a long time, so it's a great start for us. Hopefully, we can build on this [Friday] and see what happens.”